Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 is a blog that highlights workforce trends, demographic shifts, and human resources changes that will change the way employers do business.

October 2008

October 28, 2008

In less than a week the elections will be over. Hallelujah! Like millions of other people, I’ve grown extremely tired of all the political embellishment and tirades of contradictory and inflammatory rhetoric. Nevertheless I continue to listen and watch.What keeps me tuned in and online?

The answer is really quite simple. Observing and assessing how people perform, especially when in the spotlight and under pressure, fascinates me.And that’s a good thing because performance evaluation is also my business. I admire people who excel at the what they do whether it be leadership, athleticism, or singing and dancing. I am equally intrigued how so many high potential careers are derailed and self-sabotaged by personal excesses and what I’ll call “inner demons.”

In that respect, the last few weeks have served me a feast of revelations, a virtual smorgasbord of human behavior - to which I sit back, watch, and smile.

The sleaziness and negative nature of the politics disgusts me.But I am entertained – somewhat perversely – by the dynamics and tribulations of individual behavior. Of particular interest is this theme of change exhorted by both the Democrats and Republicans candidates.Against this backdrop, the campaign trail has exposed a multitude of lessons from which hiring managers can learn.At the top of my lesson list is the tried-and-true premise that past behavior IS a good predictor of future performance.

It is no secret that both Obama and McCain have been attempting to distinguish and differentiate themselves as change agents.Most of us would agree we need change – and a lot of it. My focus then as a hiring manager (or a voter) must be on what behaviors in the past would be good predictors of managing change in the future.

McCain proclaimed himself a “maverick.”I’m intrigued by his choice of words. A maverick is defined as an individual “who thinks independently; a lone dissenter; a non-conformist or rebel.” To be an agent of change, you must sometimes be willing to stand up and be counted even when your opinion is unpopular. That’s good stuff.McCain seems to fit the bill.

But thinking unconventionally and forging ahead against all odds doesn’t necessarily infer effectiveness at solving problems. Being a maverick merely describes how an individual will approach change, not how effective he or she will be.Being a maverick isn’t a skill, it’s a tool.

McCain also gave us a hint how he brandishes this tool when he selected Sarah Palin for his running mate.Why did this decision surprise us? By all accounts, he only confirmed his modus operandi – he is a maverick and his unpredictability is predictable. To prove how much a maverick he is, he even picked a maverick to be his vice president. That by no means suggests that her selection was a good or bad decision or that being a maverick is the right or wrong behavior.It merely suggests that McCain is not afraid to solve complex problems and make difficult decisions independent of what others think, based more on his “gut” than the analysis of others.He is not afraid of “shooting from the hip” (as compared to Joe Biden who tends to “shoot from the lip.”)Again, that’s not an approval or disapproval for being a maverick.It’s an observation.

There’s more. With maverick behavior comes a feistiness that attracts as many followers as it creates opponents.Madonna is both a talented entertainer and astute business person. She’s also feisty.In fact, her record label is called Maverick.Charles Barkley is feisty.Bill O’Reilly is feisty.James Carville is feisty. They either or were all considered the best in their field.But each of them seems to push the envelope to the extreme of making people uncomfortable.Am I saying that’s a bad thing?No, not at all. But sometimes you wonder if they are saying and doing things because they believe them or just to see what type of reaction he or she gets? That’s what you get with mavericks. If you want a maverick, you better be willing to live with the maverick!

McCain is seen as an out-spoken, vigorous, and mature politician through one lens but a curmudgeonly old man through another.I’m quite sure McCain’s intent was the former, not the latter.But perception is reality.

McCain is now experiencing what it’s like to live with a maverick too.Political experts at first applauded his choice of Sarah Palin as a brilliant strategic move that rejuvenated a fading campaign. But as of today, many consider it a big mistake, underestimating what it takes to manage a maverick.Remember, a maverick is a non-conformist, an independent thinker. For weeks she was the darling of the Republican Party. She was the knight in shining armor. She was the future of the Republican Party. But as predictable as the sun rises each morning, stress and pressure has a funny way of exposing another side of our behavior.You can’t box a maverick into a corner.You can’t can the behavior and shelf it behind cabinet doors.Palin the other maverick is now being described as Palin, the rogue and diva.Is that fair?No. He got what he wanted.

Has she changed?No.She is who she is. She’s the same person she was 3 months ago before most people ever heard of her. Her story is an old story. How often does a marriage fail because one spouse thought the other spouse would change after they got married?How often is a manager surprised when the overly confident candidate becomes a prima donna or the exacting, detail-oriented candidate because a nit-picky, never-can-be-pleased manager? Whether it relates to personal or professional, past behavior is a good predictor of future performance.

As I mentioned earlier, the campaign trail has been a feast of lessons learned about human behavior.Regardless of who wins, every manager can be a winner if he or she learns from the lessons taught on this campaign trail.It’s all about job fit, the alignment of an employee’s fit with the job, team and culture.

Can you hear me know? What are your observations?What can hiring managers learn from the campaign trail?

October 27, 2008

Public school teachers in the United States are absent between nine and 10 days per year, on average. In other words, between kindergarten and 12th grade, a typical student is taught by someone other than the regularly assigned teacher for the equivalent of two-thirds of a school year. Students experience teacher absence in bursts of time, ranging from a few hours to a few months, and this fractured exposure may help deflect policymakers’ attention. Yet there are three good reasons to revisit policies around teacher absence:

Teacher absence is expensive. With 5.3 percent of teachers absent on a given day, stipends for substitute teachers and associated administrative costs amount to $4 billion, annually.

Teacher absence negatively affects student achievement. Researchers have found that every 10 absences lowers mathematics achievement by the same amount as having a teacher with one year to two years of experience instead of a teacher with three years to five years of experience.

Teacher absence disproportionately affects low-income students. Students in schools serving predominantly low-income families experience teacher absence at higher rates than students in more affluent communities. Part of the achievement gap is thus due to a teacher attendance gap.

This report provides new analyses of data from an anonymous, large, urban school district in the northern United States. The data include dates and “excuse” codes for 130,747 absences taken by 5,189 teachers in 106 schools over four years. Patterns teased from the data put the spotlight on discretionary absences—those due to personal days or short-term illnesses. Discretionary absences comprise 56 percent of all absences and tend to occur on days adjacent to non-instructional days, such as weekends. This suggests that teachers have room to respond to incentives that discourage avoidable absences and encourage excellent attendance.

October 24, 2008

It's no secret that Latinos are the fastest-growing traditionally underrepresented group in the country. But a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center reveals that Latinos accounted for over half of the overall U.S. population growth since 2000. Compared to Latino-population-growth patterns in the 1990s, there were some specific changes found. During that period, although the Latino population expanded rapidly, the growth only accounted for less than 40 percent of the nation's total population increase. But from 2000 to 2007, Latinos made up 50.5 percent of the total U.S. population growth.

Another significant change cited in the report was about natural increase versus international migration. In the '90s, the growth was largely due to international migration, but in recent years, there have been more natural increases (births minus deaths).

October 20, 2008

The Centralian Advocate recently reported on a global trend among tech-savvy teenagers. Teens world-wide are using Google Earth images to identify homes in their areas that have large out-door pools. Once found, they use social networking sites such as Facebook to meet other teens for impromptu parties.

Homeowners have awakened in the middle of the night or arrived home to un-welcomed guests on their property. In order to avoid arrest, party-goers show up in bathing suits with a bicycle so they can make a clean getaway. Is this an evolution of what teenagers do to satiate their boredom despite the conse-quences? What are the implications of an emerging generation that acts on their what's-yours-is-mine mentality?

While Washington tries to figure out how the U.S. can free ourselves from our dependence on oil, another shortage is going to create a seismic shift in our ability to get the oil, gas, and coal out of the ground and into our homes and businesses.

Demographic realities have created a labor shortage for Energy Utilities that can no longer be ignored. The potential risks to the industry are clear when you consider the roles effected by demographic trends—plant managers, nuclear engineers, shift supervisors, transmission construction managers, technology professionals and energy traders. These roles are central to the industry's ability to deliver uninterrupted power to its customers.

These trends are significant and require executives like you to act now to address this strategic business problem.A few of these imminent trends are:

48 years is the average age of a utility employee. Only one other industry, out of 54, has a higher average age—Real Estate.

19.2 % of the industry is within 5 to 7 years of retirement.

16,000 fewer 16 to 34 year olds work in the industry, compared to 1990.

Since 1995, the number of workers, 55 and older has increased 2 ¼ times. Older workers are the fastest growing segment within the industry.

During the same time period, the 25 to 44 year old segment has contracted by 25%. That means you will have fewer managers and supervisors to support increasing demand for energy and a seismic shift in the demand for skilled workers.

While I tried to come up with a very clever or compelling close to this post, I'm stuck on this...so I'll go with it.

What happens when the last person leaves the utility industry? How will avoid having to turn the lights out on all of us?

For more information about trends in different industries and the workforce, visit the Perfect Labor Storm website.

October 17, 2008

U.S. high school students are getting their lunches eaten when it comes to math and science scores. While that news is both tragic and disgusting, it's old news. What is new is this story that just crossed by desk:

The Dallas (TX) school district announced yesterday they had to lay of hundreds of teachers to avoid projected $84 million deficit due to a math miscalculation.

Ooops!

At a time when we should be pouring money into re-inventing our education system, the collapse of our financial system and "massive miscalculations" on a local level (apparently unrelated events) are forcing cut-backs of massive proportions. Are we setting ourselves up for the next massive U.S. bailout?

In a recent report titled, Are They Really Ready to Work? a Workforce Readiness Report Card found that over forty percent of high school graduates failed the grade and less than half barely received a passing grade. The report card for new entrants with a high school diploma does not have a single item in the Excellence List.

In another report, The Silent Epidemic, the study found that there are nearly 2,000 high schools in the U.S. where 40 percent of the typical freshman class leaves school by its senior year. Nationally, research puts the graduation rate between 68 and 71 percent, which means that almost one-third of all public high school students in America fail to graduate.

Breaking that down even further, every 29 seconds another student gives up on school, resulting in more than one million American high school students who drop out every year.

The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries. And compared to the most advanced economies of Europe and Asia (Source: Nation at Risk), 39 percent of U.S. white eighth graders were proficient in reading vs. just 15 percent of Hispanics and 12 percent of blacks.

To me, it seems like we've had a lot of "sub-prime" educating going on and now miscalculations in the board room of another industry will topple another U.S. system, once the standard bearer of quality and innovation.

October 15, 2008

Surveys show that cheating in school — plagiarism, forbidden collaboration on assignments, copying homework and cheating on exams — has soared.

The latest national survey of 25,000 high school students by Dr. Donald McCabe of Rutgers found that more than 90 percent of the students said they had cheated in one way or another. This number has steadily risen since Dr. McCabe has been studying cheating. The percentage of students who copied from another student during tests grew from 26 percent in 1963 to 52 percent in 1993, and the use of crib notes during exams went from 6 percent to 27 percent. By the mid-1990s, only a small minority said they had never cheated, meaning that cheating had become part of the acceptable status quo.

Students of both genders and every demographic group cheat even though they know it is wrong.

The biggest determinant is not the values that students are exposed to at home, but peer norms at school. Students are under pressure to achieve high grade-point averages, which helps them rationalize their behavior. And the schools themselves are complicit, because they reward high grades more than the process of learning — while too often turning a blind eye to the cheating.

Pre-employment screening is on the rise. Honesty and integrity tests like Candid Clues and SELECT screen candidates for workplace attitudes like dependability, honesty, frustration tolerance. For more information about pre-employment tests, click here.

October 10, 2008

Rising labor costs, severe staffing delays, and chronic job vacancies are derailing organizational productivity and growth. Put simply, inadequate workforce planning and poor management of talent demand are major barriers to business growth in a time of an aging workforce, heightened regulatory constraints and economic uncertainty. In the typical organization the following occurs:

The average recruiting organization misjudges its 12-month forecast by 15% and can only predict 50% of the types of hires needed over the same period.

Costly compensation penalties (largely a result of poor talent planning) are widespread: more than 50% of hiring managers offer higher-than- necessary compensation packages to fill positions.

October 09, 2008

With rising economic uncertainty and shrinking profit margins, organizations can ill afford the cost of placing "poor fit" candidates into critical roles. According to a just released study by The Recruiting Roundtable:

Only 50% of all new hires are the right fit for their jobs

Only 29% of organizations consistently acquire talent that is a good fit for the organization.

Today, nearly 10% of new hires turn over within six months, at an average cost of more than US$26,000 per employee.

October 07, 2008

Organizations or their new hires regret their hiring decisions 50% of the time, costing the average organization millions in the way of lower performance, less engaged new hires, and higher turnover according to a first of its kind study by The Recruiting Roundtable, a division of the Corporate Executive Board.

The study details several contributing factors including that 40% of new hires report the information they receive about a job when they were applying was less than accurate. Overall, only half the time will organizations and new hires achieve a win-win outcome where both agree that they made the right decision.

The study included the analysis of data from more than 8,500 hiring managers and 19,000 of their most recent hires.The Roundtable identified three important reasons organization fail to consistently hire high quality candidates: